...about their government. If a Chinese citizen uses Google and searches for something which the People's Republic of China somehow considers unacceptable, it isn't Google's job to warn him - it's the citizen's job to understand the laws of his country and honor them as he/she sees fit.

Now, if you want to complain about somebody, complain about the People's Republic of China. It's THEIR laws and policies which make this a threat to free speech, not Google's capitulation to the lawful government of China.

Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that technically, it is indeed all legal, but she emphasized that people don't really understand how their random thoughts, disclosures or opinions on social media may be exploited.

"I think people don't realize when they sign up for these sites that the government is going to be routinely monitoring and sifting through this data," she said.

"If Coca-Cola is reading all my tweets," Dan Zarrella points out, "it's not as scary as if the DOD is reading all my tweets, right?"

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Colonel, that Coca Cola machine, I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.

Col. "Bat" Guano: That's private property.

Mandrake: Colonel, can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame outlook way of life on everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the president of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot, with the gun! That's what the bullets are for you twit!

If you're saying "Actually some cultural practices are pretty terrible" then I totally agree.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

but violating people's basic rights can not be justified with references to culture

this applies to problems in the west too, i'm not singling out china

you can't say chinese people are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture. or muslim women are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture. or poor people in western nations leaning towards social darwinism as plutocrats warp the politics are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture

you are referring of course to the plutocrat unilaterally declaring that less of the poor worker's efforts should result in their just reward, and continue to insist on more reward for himself, correct?

or are you one of those morons who thinks redistribution only happens when the poor want more than bare survival, or less, and backed into a corner in a society where the plutocrat writes all the rules, has no recourse except force?

but violating people's basic rights can not be justified with references to culture

this applies to problems in the west too, i'm not singling out china

you can't say chinese people are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture. or muslim women are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture. or poor people in western nations leaning towards social darwinism as plutocrats warp the politics are happy being slaves, so let them be, it's just culture

bullshit

NO ONE is happy being a slave. culture is no excuse

Basic rights in a Democracy are far different than in a Communist government. Whether they are happy is irrelevant. They choose to live in China so they must adhere to the restrictions of their society. Many countries outside the USA would say we have too much freedom. Sometimes I agree.

Would you say it isn't anyone's job bring censorship to light, and that it's up to Americans individually to understand, and to obey or rebel as he/she sees fit? I'm quite certain in that case you'd disagree, and you'd likely counter-argue that the individual's attempt to enlighten him/herself without help is a futile act in the presence of a state which has so much control on media and information. If that could be true of the US, why would that not be even more so of China?

Google should not have been doing with China anyway, for ethical reasons.

Despite their old "Do No Evil" slogan (man, you sure don't hear that much anymore), when people protested their planned cooperation with Chinese government censorship, and said they should not go to China at all, Google's argument was (literally): "If we don't do it, someone else will."

Its google's decision to do business with the "lawful" government of China. The argument has always been "its ok if they do business with an oppressive government - they'll use that access to have a positive influence". Without that strip of pretense, it comes down to doing whatever an oppressive government wants in order to increase profitability. The fact that so many companies and countries accept China's oppression of its own people surely does not help the situation.

True, complicity is shared, though you'd be hard pressed to argue it is shared equally. I wouldn't call google's collusion with China equivalent to China's restriction of free speech, I'd call it contributory. Additionally one might say is that the level of corporate collusion with an oppressive government is an effective target to apply political pressure.

...about their government. If a Chinese citizen uses Google and searches for something which the People's Republic of China somehow considers unacceptable, it isn't Google's job to warn him - it's the citizen's job to understand the laws of his country and honor them as he/she sees fit.

Now, if you want to complain about somebody, complain about the People's Republic of China. It's THEIR laws and policies which make this a threat to free speech, not Google's capitulation to the lawful government of China.

Logically, people in the box can't even know they are in the box or, that the box even exists.Google was not trying to circumvent Chinese laws against accessing certain things on the internet, but merely telling their users what to avoid.Even that is not permitted, in other words: the People are not allowed to know that the box exists.

(Probably the Chinese internet users are not that clueless. Given a few generations, they will be.)

But your suggestion that people complain about the PRC instead of Google se

Too late. Sorta like predicting a hurricane will hit yesterday. By the time users see that warning, they will already have mortally sinned - nothing for it but an extended vacation at the local People's Reeducation through Labor facility.

I used Google search in China, and found it very unreliable..COM wouldn't work at all, and.com.hm was erratic, so I used.co.uk. Some pages would load fine, but others wouldn't -- the first network packet (mostly the HTML header, title, etc) would be received, then the TCP connection would be reset. I suspect Google had something in the page like "Due to the government... some results have been removed", and the Great Firewall blocked these packets and shut the connection.

Your google shows.co.uk? Oh wait, you are trying to make a point that other countries also have censorship and that those countries will start investigating you for search results that have DMCA flags.

That was really subtle of you!!! Wow!!!

Thanks for teaching us a valuable lesson that you think the UK is just like China

Your google shows.co.uk? Oh wait, you are trying to make a point that other countries also have censorship and that those countries will start investigating you for search results that have DMCA flags.

That was really subtle of you!!! Wow!!!

Thanks for teaching us a valuable lesson that you think the US is just like China

That's fairly pointless. Let's say I start typing "Tuna". My browser sends "Tuna" to Google's servers so it can get a list of suggested search phrases, including the two you provided. On its way to Google servers... it passes through Chinese ISP servers and I get flagged for searching for Tuna. Google's warning would come too late.

Google's system, though I never saw it myself, sounds like it would have sent a list of banned words to the browser as part of the page, before the user searches. Then when the user starts typing, the browser will NOT send anything to Google with a banned word in it until the user addresses the warning displayed. Your idea, if adjusted properly to not send traffic to Google with banned words in it, would end up being only a minor variation of this.

The problem is when you search for a "banned" word you basically get kicked off the internet for a short period of time (and usually not just you, but your whole apartment or whatever). So your search for "tuna" would simply never return, it's too late at that point.

Thus Google added the prediction thing because it looks to users like Google kept going down when in reality it was the Great Firewall. But China fought back, and if it was still ineffective as a result it makes sense to abandon it.

It's worth pointing out that in most of the world Google already does all-SSL all the time. I don't know if you're right that the Chinese firewalls disrupt SSL, or if the Chinese firewalls play man-in-the-middle, but either way SSL doesn't really help when your opponent has that sort of resources.

...they do so to support a f*cking mega corporation that would sh*ts on them at a moments notice, for chance of extracting a few extra dollars from the customers. Google withdrew *alone* from China in a response to "evil"...What did they do when "Human Rights Watch praised the decision and urged other firms to follow suit in challenging censorship...on yeah right I remember *nothing*...Lets call them Microsoft who at the time by the "the Congressional-Executive Commission on China...sharply criticized Microsoft for continuing to be complicit with China's censorship laws"...what about Apple??. Acting Alone Googles strategy was weak/stupid.

Wow, you seem to have confused Google with a comic book superhero. It's a business. To do anything at all in the world, it first has to stay in business. Second, to continue to do anything, it has to make a profit. It isn't a charitable organization, it isn't the U.N. with power over governments of the world. It isn't a superhero.

It's just a business. You seem to believe it's a superhero with vast powers to fight whole governments for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

I hate to say this but anyone who runs something as vast, large, and influencial as Google has a responsability to look after the interests of their fellow man and the technologies they rely on. Otherwise they are directly contributing to the dystopian future we are headed towards.

If google doesn't do something about the internet, it will loose potential profit. It will be harming it self as well.

It takes allot of bravery for me to come here and give my trolly rant knowing I will be pissing off allot of peo

And to be clear, google has the power to provide unfiltered results and let the government figure out a way to block things, not cater to them. That is all I expect, its trivial to revert their code back to what it was.

There is no reason to assume that Google isn't "providing unfiltered results". I see no evidence they have ever filtered results for China. In fact, as I recall, that's why they moved their servers out of China.

Why are you claiming they are censoring results?
What TFA is about is Google decided to stop warning Chinese users that specific key words would trigger Chinese government censoring (and possibly worse). Shall we assume that Google found the warning was useless?

Google is actively participating in the fragmentation of the global web. Their search is not fair and equal across all audiences. Its porn now. But mark my words it will be politics soon, if there isnt some subtle chilling effect already.

What happens when only governments with clones of googles accurate unfiltered search database are the on

What makes Google valuable is that it does a pretty good job of presenting what it thinks best fulfills your request. That has been and continues to be what makes Google better than what came before. I remember the days of almost completely unfiltered results from searches and the returned data was almost completely useless.

But, that being said, that is also Google's potentially biggest danger. When their "guesses" do not align with what people actually

This I agree with completely, and I see google teatering. And with headlines like "Gives up". I know that might not even be google speaking. But to tell people you've given up is horrible =)

I sorta feel like as an American they've given up on us to. But I hope, we, or google, or someone else finds out a better way to implement filtering. I am all for filtering and I totally agree, when I search for something I don't want 1000 commercial porn sites blocking me from finding a real answer. But that power shoul

I see no problem with wanting businesses to work to help mankind in any way they they are able. The operative word is "able". There are limits to what a single company, no matter how large, can do.

Companies cannot break the law. This isn't like an individual who might break the law in protest. Companies cannot operate like that for quite a number of reasons -- consult a corporate lawyer for details.

Google had to completely leave China because, while they disagreed with China's censorship requirement

I agree they have no choice in China. I think in that case the best they could do would provide secure services people in China could access through torproject or VPNs. And to close shop as a Chinese company doesnt mean they have to refuse that market.

My rant was I think flawed as it is tried to point out though that China is not the only place this is starting to happen. And google seems ok with by literally implementing features into their own site.

Look, if the Chinese people are not going to fight for human rights and removal of censorship then why should some American company do so?

I think everyone outside of China believe they need to fight for Chinese rights but obviously the Chinese living in China are largely accepting of the state of their rights, those that don't go to another country.

I can't believe that in a country with over 1 billion people the government would be able to suppress a revolution if the population demanded better human rights

Of all the FOB Chinese I talk to, very few even care about this issue. Mostly they're not even aware of it, and if they are, they don't see it as anything worth worrying about. From a Western individualist point of view, it's sad to see people who don't care about oppression, so long as it's done in the name of unity. But then, that's us and that's them. Maybe they have a point in going for national unity and peace over individual rights. What do I know.

Its fine to let them be and not force our western individualism on them until it starts bleeding across borders and affecting us, which it really is starting to do. I don't think this is giong to stop with China, the sings of the times are there for those that care.

it's one thing to censor results but to inform you that it has happened but it's another to silently remove results. It's so irritating to spend hours searching for something only later to relise that it's been censored.

Isn't there any decency to people these days? If a thread or reply on a forum gets deleted isn't it only fair to inform other people that it has happened?

I have no idea which one, but somekind of agreement must have been reached. I'm sure that Google ceeded something and the Chinese also. We shall see. Something to do with the change of leadership in China?